


Start, Set, Rewind

by cobalamincosel



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - College/University, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Light Angst, M/M, Model Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Break Up, Rapper Mark Lee (NCT)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22385074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/pseuds/cobalamincosel
Summary: The thing about break-ups is it’s never a definite break.Mark Lee doesn’t believe in staying friends after breaking up with someone; Lucas disagrees, but Mark's given him no choice.No one ever said anything about subtweeting each other, though.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Comments: 53
Kudos: 252
Collections: 99' ft 00' fic fest





	Start, Set, Rewind

**Author's Note:**

> For Prompt: #FT368 
> 
> AU based on Khalid's location. Post breakup!au where they should be broken up, but they just can’t seem to get enough. (Or: They don’t believe in staying friends after breaking up, but Mark and Lucas can’t help but subtweet.)
> 
> Dear prompter, I was hooked from the moment I saw the prompt, and started writing the first paragraph almost immediately. You didn’t specify how this should have ended, so I hope you don’t mind too much that this ends the way that it did, and that you still like it despite that. 
> 
> -
> 
> **Please see end notes for the very important thank yous! :)**

The thing about break-ups is it’s never a definite break. 

People talk about them like it’s a clean-cut, like it’s easy to take scissors to a relationship that has ended and make it out like nothing happened when the truth of the matter is that when people break up, it’s more like you’re trying to excise cancer that has metastasized around lungs and heart and ribs and-- 

Well. You get the point. 

There’s no surgeon on earth capable of making clean breaks the way we hope break-ups go, or at least this is what Mark thinks when he’s packing 4 and a half years’ worth of gifts from Lucas into a massive box. But he’s sure as hell gonna try.

See, he doesn’t believe in staying friends after the relationship has ended, and he tells himself it’s no different in this case. 

(Even if this is tearing him apart.)

It’s been two days since he and Lucas called it quits. It doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet, but it’s just as well. He and Lucas are going in different directions in their lives, and it’s been six months of them losing their tempers with each other, being impatient, being jealous, being--- children. 

Mark pauses. 

The duck plushie Lucas had gotten him stares at him from his bed. Mr. Dodo, Lucas had named him. Lucas had been home, back in Hong Kong, when he had shown Mark the stuffed bird on Skype.

“A little present for you!” Lucas had said, beaming up at him. Mark had smiled back, his heart in his throat, the words “I love you” just barely hidden behind his teeth. It is too soon, Mark had told himself. It’s only been a month. 

Mark in present-day shakes himself. 

Takes a steady breath. 

Puts Mr. Dodo into the box along with the others: books, a fleece blanket, several shirts, marked CDs in Lucas’ big, messy scrawl. 

Mark doesn’t feel it much. Not yet. He’s kind of sequestered everything inside of him for now so he can get through this. Objectively, it really is for the best, them breaking up. He’d never been a fan of long-distance relationships, and now that college is over for the both of them, now that Lucas has signed with a modeling agency that will take him everywhere, and Mark’s music career is starting to finally get a solid foundation, the loss of physicality that had started to create the rift between them will only be exacerbated by new upheavals.

Mark realizes that he’s being a little bit clinical about this, a little bit detached, a little bit cold. 

(Cold. What Lucas had called him. He bites down on his tongue.)

But this is the closest thing he can get to a clean break, and as he finishes packing up the box and stripping his room of every possible trace of the man that he had loved for so long, he tells himself, “This is for the best.”

-

It’s Jeno who first tells Mark about the subtweeting. 

Mark doesn’t see it on his feed because Lucas had blocked him on Twitter after Mark had Unfriended him on Facebook, and the last he’d heard from Lucas before he’d blocked his number was “Rich. Real rich, Mark.”

Okay, so their breakup hasn’t been… smooth. Mark’s been angry a lot, but it’s not something he’s ever going to admit out loud to anyone, especially since he’s the one who called it quits in the end. It’s been a month, 3 weeks and 2 days, not that Mark is counting.

(He’s been counting.)

He wakes up to a screenshot of Lucas’ public profile from Jeno, so it doesn’t feel so much like an imposition of privacy. Mark has his private account but Lucas knows about it and blocked him there too, which was only fair, he supposes. Even if it does sting a little bit. 

**Xuxi 🍣 @wongyukhei | 16h**

Send me your location

Let's focus on communicatin' 'cause

I just need the time and place to come through

** Khalid - Location (Official Music Video) **

It isn’t anything much, but Mark remembers the day that music video had dropped, and how Lucas had had it on loop for a week. 

It’s the first tweet from Lucas’ account since their breakup, Jeno informs him. Mark purses his lips. Pretends it doesn’t phase him in the slightest.

**Markeu | 7:28 am**

Thanks for letting me know but we blocked each other for a reason

**Jeno-ya! | 7:29 am**

Sorry

But also not sorry

**Markeu | 7:31 am**

Yeah, didn’t think so 😤

Jeno doesn’t respond to that, and Mark leaves it. 

But the screenshot doesn’t leave him either, not once, as he carries out the things he had planned for the day. 

He’s been trying to write a little bit every day, but he’s been feeling stumped, trying his best to not let so much of his heartache bleed into his work, though it’s become increasingly harder and harder to do so. 

He’d thought that time would make things easier, but all time has done has given him chances to look at the mangled mess that was the end of things, and Mark hates that the conclusion he always arrives at is that he was a hasty idiot and that he misses— no. No. He halts the thought. It’s over, a done deal. Over. 

Over. 

-

So it becomes a sort of problem. Like, just a little one. One where Mark opens up an incognito browser to check out Lucas’ profile before he goes to bed every day for the next seven days. 

He knows this isn’t good for his health but it’s frustrating when it’s been a week of Lucas retweeting photos from New York Fashion Week and only a couple of personal tweets. Mark is starting to think that the Youtube link to ‘Location’ was a fluke, but it doesn’t stop him from opening up his browser and waiting for the page to load. He could very well just make a new account that isn’t blocked, but he can’t be bothered really. He can’t let himself give in to the temptation of accidentally liking one of Lucas’ tweets. 

Mark pulls up the browser and it’s like Lucas knows he’s online or something because a new tweet appears, and it sort of knocks the wind out of him. 

**Xuxi 🍣 @wongyukhei | 8s**

I'm ripping your posters off the wall

I'm moving the boxes into the hall

I stop when I hear a drumbeat call

Must be a sign, it is time

https://open.spotify.com/track/1vJOfcKh8j21Oqt2dc9rel?si=l5d8wKNmQPOEqTEfj2_0Qw 

It’s not a song he’s familiar with, so Mark clicks on the Spotify link, and the opening lines are the lyrics Lucas had tweeted. He pulls up the lyrics and hunches over his phone, leans back against the pillows, and reads through them. 

Maybe this is Lucas’ way of saying he was moving on.

-

[ They’re lying in bed, Lucas’ massive frame curled up around Mark, who has his head pillowed on Lucas’ arm. 

“What are you thinking about?” Mark asks, fingers trailing on Lucas’ jaw. 

Lucas hums, his eyes sliding closed, a small smile appearing when Mark traces over his lips. 

“Just thinking about how I’d been so afraid to tell you how I felt, and then you just-- made everything light from that point on,” Lucas says, eyes still shut, smile in place. 

Mark is, as usual, winded from how simply Lucas says it, like getting the truth out isn’t a matter of overcoming his own personal embarrassment. 

Mark has liked Lucas for so long, he can’t remember a time when he didn’t. He’d met him in the campus cafeteria, after bumping into him and promptly spilling all the contents of his tray onto the floor, four months into their freshman year-- Mark, who had been a major at the College of Music; Lucas who had been a Health Sciences major. 

Lucas, who had pulled off his backpack to crouch down and help Mark clean the mess up while the lunch lady had fussed over them both, a mess of rice and soup all on the red tiles and all over their hands. 

“Hey, man, I’m so sorry, I should have watched where I was going,” Lucas had said, frowning earnestly at the goop of wet rice he had in his hand that he had scooped onto the tray. 

Mark, absolutely mortified, because he knew full well that he had been the one who hadn’t been watching where he was going, had tried to shoo him away, tutting and saying, “Oh my god, please, you don’t have to clean up my mess!”

They’d been friends since. Lovers for just a little less. 

“When did you realize you loved me?” Mark asks, and this is when Lucas opens his eyes, gaze bright and fond as Mark looks up to meet his stare. 

“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t,” is what Lucas says. 

Mark kisses him then. ]

-

**Renjunnie | 8:45 am**

Markles, what is this?

[image attached]

Mark stares at the screenshot that Renjun has just sent in, of a tweet Mark himself has just posted. 

**Mark Lee @markles | 8 am**

so hurry up and lose me

hurry up and find me

again

I am no less found to you

than when I crossed into your silence

** Laura Gibson “Empire Builder” (Official Lyric Video) **

Mark knows it’s petty. 

He knows. He knows that Lucas can’t see his tweets because Lucas still has him blocked, and there’s no point to this stupid exercise, but every day, Lucas has posted cryptic lyrics intercut with tweets of his modeling gigs, tweets with photos of him shining in orange and white light, and every night, the thorns that have erupted around Mark’s heart hurt him a little more and more. 

It’s been two and a half months. 

It’s been two months apart and it hurts Mark in a way that frustrates him because his decision to cut things off and make no contact at all whatsoever should mean that it is supposed to get easier, this being apart. 

He’d told Jeno once, when he was going through his breakup with Jaemin, that the first two weeks of a breakup were the hardest. It’s in that immediate time when your body is still trying to unlearn knowing what it’s like to be without someone it’s so used to being with. 

“You get phantom limb, sort of,” Mark had said, talking like he had much experience when really he’d only ever dated two other people before he’d met Lucas, and neither of those relationships was exactly healthy or gold standards. “Like all you wanna do is text them and send them something funny that reminded you of them and all, but you gotta fight the urge to. There’s no such thing as being friends with your exes. So you resist the urge to message them. You gotta be strong, you know? Like, it ended for a reason.”

(Jeno had not taken Mark’s advice, not entirely. He had avoided speaking to Jaemin for a while, but that had lasted all of three weeks before they were trying out being friends, and somehow, it fucking worked.)

Mark has had to keep tamping down on the urge to unblock Lucas’ number, on the urge to friend request him on Facebook, on the urge to make an entirely new Twitter account to reach out to him. 

It has been two months of longing and self-loathing and missing Lucas, of reaching out to empty bedsides and grasping air, and Mark wishes that he could keep it at bay, wishes he could just keep turning the emotion off instead of wanting to send over a white cat meme or an old Vine they used to love and laugh over together. 

He still hasn’t replied to Renjun, and Renjun knows he’s seen his message. 

**Markeu | 9:14 am**

Just a song I heard

Why

**Renjunnie | 9:14 am**

[link]

Mark wants to throttle Renjun because he responds with a Youtube link to the _Why You Always Lyin’_ vine and he wants to go on the defensive, but he knows that he doesn’t exactly have much of a defense, to begin with. 

The other thing about breakups is that when you and your significant other share so many friends, it gets a little bit murky. They won’t want to draw the lines but Mark can’t help but feel that they’d drawn the lines anyway. He pretends that it doesn’t sting that Dejun, Yangyang and Kunhang have barely reached out to him, but considering that they’d been Lucas’ friends first, he tries very hard to not hold it against them that things ended up this way. 

(It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t miss them, or the chaos that all of them used to drag into the room when they were all together.)

**Renjunnie | 9:15 am**

Markles, do u wanna talk about it? You still haven’t really opened up and we’re kinda worried about you

Mark’s heart races. This isn’t the first time someone has asked about him, or about the breakup. Mark had managed to get away with averting the discussion for the first couple of weeks by saying that he wasn’t ready for it, but he’s run out of time, and he’s starting to come apart at the seams. If he’s honest with himself, and normally he is -- except for how it’s been the last couple of months -- Mark knows he isn’t okay. He hasn’t even cried over Lucas yet. It makes no sense. 

Mark is about to respond to Renjun when another message comes in.

**Renjunnie | 9:19 am**

We haven’t heard you laugh in over two months, man

Mark stares at the message. Feels his chest cave in. 

-

It’s a stupid rule, Lucas thinks. It’s so fucking stupid. Exes can be friends, or least not part ways like-- well, like this. 

The box on his doorstep is a mockery and it hurts so, so much that it’s there at all, but he pulls it into his room and shoves it up against the corner of his bedroom. The box goes up to about Lucas’ knee, and it’s heavy. He doesn’t need to open it to know what’s inside. 

He lies in bed and goes over it and over it and over it. The last couple of months have been difficult. He’s been difficult, he knows. It’s not all on Mark, even if his brain wants to tell him otherwise right now just so he can make it through the next hour. The next day. They’ve fought more in this latter half of the year than they ever did in the first four years of their relationship, and that’s the kicker, isn’t it? That things had been perfect until they started realizing that love was not enough. 

Lucas wants to put the blame on Mark, wants to think that Mark is the hasty one, the unreasonable one, that he’s been patient, but when he closes his eyes and thinks back to the beginning of the year when the cracks began to show, it’s all Lucas can do to not break apart. 

There are tears in his eyes that are unwelcome, but necessary. 

There is a part of Lucas, a tiny part, a shameful part, that wishes that there was someone else, either on his end or Mark’s, because then that would be easy, wouldn’t it? To be angry because of a third party? It would be so much simpler: a place to anchor their anger and their hurt, even if the betrayal of trust would have meant something truly vile and irreparable. 

But that isn’t the case. 

This is all on them, just the two of them. 

Lucas curls in on himself, his framed photos of him and Mark still up on the wall across him from the bed. It hits him then, the realization that the culmination of four and a half years’ worth of memories that take root in material things now all reside inside his room. Mark kept nothing, he’s sure of it. Mark has always been the champion for clean breaks. Seems like Yukhei wasn’t special enough for him to bend on this. 

-

[The end doesn’t happen quite as suddenly as their breakup makes it out to be. It happens slowly, over time, and it almost seems innocuous at first. 

Lucas, all six feet of him, gets scouted on campus by a modeling agency, and this coincides with his decision to no longer pursue medicine come graduation. It’s something he realizes from the years of being chosen to model the official SMU merchandise and be part of the little events on campus that he actually enjoys these little gigs, and when he gets brought in for a test shoot, the agency talks about getting him for products like jeans, coffee, the works. It’s tempting, and it’s exhilarating, and despite his initial fears, his family is surprisingly supportive of the decision. 

The thing is, Mark is, too. Mark had known, has known, this entire time, that Lucas is gorgeous, and charismatic, and driven. It’s everything he’s loved about Lucas since their first year together. Lucas had first expressed how he didn’t think medicine was for him when Mark had caught him staring off in the library when he was supposed to be doing his organic chemistry lab report. 

Mark hadn’t thought too much of it, had assumed it was the stress of having a raving lunatic for an org chem professor, but it became a prevailing thought, and when the start of their last first semester had rolled around, Lucas had told him that he was going to talk to his parents about not pursuing medicine after, but that he’d needed a solid plan first before he could. 

So. 

The end. 

It happens like this:

Schedules that become more and more erratic, given that Mark has a final recital and a thesis to submit and defend; Lucas having to defend his own thesis while trying to not fail physiology and booking some jobs on the side where the photography and arts students pay him in cash and in kind to pose for them. 

It’s always time. Time that Lucas and Mark used to have for each other that turns into “I’m sorry” and “I’ll be home late”. Time that turns into Lucas forgetting that it’s their anniversary, and Lucas coming back to his dorm room with a neat little box on his bed, a Seiko watch sitting on the pillow with a simple card that says, “Happy Anniversary, Sushi. I love you. - M.” Time that Lucas spends trying to make it up to Mark. Time that they use to make up for the time they’ve lost.

It happens like this: 

Opinions start to change-- little things, things like food and fashion and friends. Little things that build up. Little things that turn into fights, things like, “I don’t think you spending so much time with that photographer is doing much for you career;” things like, “You already used this lyric in the previous song, isn’t it getting repetitive?” 

Little things that turn into big things. Big fights. 

Suddenly, they’re no longer hearing each other. 

Suddenly, they no longer care about listening to each other. 

Suddenly, Mark turns into the person he swore he’d never turn into, and Lucas hates how ugly everything is now. 

Suddenly, Lucas isn’t calling after him. Instead, his shoulders slump and cage him, and he takes a seat. Instead, he’s pressing his knuckles into his eyes in a futile attempt to stem his tears. It’s always him who cries, anyway. Mark isn’t much of a crier, never has been. He’s never held it against Mark, except right now. 

So they both know they’re breaking-- broken. 

It happens.]

-

It takes Mark by surprise when he sees a familiar handle on his timeline the next day. 

It’s not anything much -- it’s something that has 256 likes, and 97 retweets but it shows up on his timeline and Mark’s hands are shaking because he hasn’t seen Lucas’ username on this feed for months now and all of a sudden it’s there, the Twitter algorithm telling him that several of his mutuals have liked a tweet by Twitter user @wongyukhei.

**Xuxi 🍣 @wongyukhei | 8h**

'Cause behind its door, there's nothing to keep my fingers warm

And all I find are souvenirs from better times

Before the gleam of your taillights fading east

To find yourself a better life

Lucas isn’t having a good day, or week, Mark isn’t sure. He just knows it’s bad when he starts bringing out the Death Cab for Cutie playlist. 

During finals week in junior year, Lucas had listened to nothing but Death Cab for Cutie, morose over his philosophy thesis statements and his accounting term paper, and Mark had told him that he was concerned over how many times he’d played Marching Bands of Manhattan already. 

He’s not sure what compels him to do it either, but Mark finds himself typing out the rest of the lyrics and hitting “TWEET” on his goddamn phone and it’s. Well, it’s out there now. 

He could delete it. 

He should delete it. 

**Mark Lee @markles | 4s**

I was searching for some legal document

As the rain beat down on the hood

When I stumbled upon pictures I tried to forget

And that's how this idea was drilled into my head

There are seven likes in the span of a couple of seconds. He wonders if it will somehow find its way to Lucas’ timeline. 

Mark still can’t believe that he can see the tweet, because for the longest time he’s been blocked. This means that Lucas had actually taken the time to key in his username and hit “Unblock”. He’d gone out of his way to do that. 

Mark does his express best to not let anything like hope bubble up in his chest, but it’s difficult to quell it when his fingers are tingling, refreshing his timeline and checking his notifications every so often to see how much traction it’s gotten. 

He has no idea what he’s doing, subtweeting his ex-boyfriend like this when this goes against his own personal rules, when this goes against pretty much everything he and Lucas used to complain about when couples around them would break up and they’d watch from their high horses, thinking it would never happen to them, thinking it would never come to this. 

He doesn’t expect Lucas to react to his tweet, but he hopes that considering how they still generally share the same friend group both online and off, Lucas will somehow see it and---

And then what? 

Mark sets his phone down. 

This is stupid. 

It’s all so stupid. It’s juvenile, tweeting out lyrics to a song they both know like it’s a code for something, like they’re Satine and Christian in Moulin Rouge and this is how they speak without speaking. 

He knows the messages will come before he receives them, but when they do, his phone pings and pings as the group chat comes alive and it’s several people sending in a screenshot of both Mark’s and Lucas’ tweets and aggressive “???????????” from everyone in the Dreamies’ GC. 

**Jaemin:** WHAT IS GOING ON

 **Jeno** : Are you and Lucas subtweeting each other now is that what this is 

**Chenle** : [photo attached]

 **Chenle:** MARKLES

 **Jisung:** didnt u tell me subtweeting was for babies

 **Donghyuck** : @ HIM U COWARD

 **Renjun:** Mark, for real what’s gong on

 **Renjun** : going**

Mark sighs. This is what he gets for not talking about it. 

**Mark:** Hey guys

 **Mark** : Uh

 **Mark:** hahaha 

**Mark** : I guess? I just wanted to tweet it? Like

 **Donghyuck** : we’re listneing

 **Donghyuck** : listening

 **Mark:** Thanks Hyuck

 **Mark** : uh, it’s just. like . i know that when he listens to death cab it’s a bad week…

 **Jaemin:** …

 **Chenle** : you know….

 **Jisung:** mark-hyung

 **Jeno:** Mark, I know it’s been hard ok but you gotta actually talk 

**Jeno** : like either to us to to him but I don’t think this is doing either of u any good?

 **Jeno:** im sorry if it feels like were ganging up on u it’s just been difficult to bring it up

Mark knows. He knows. He knows it was too abrupt. He knows that there’s a million other ways that he could have gone about this breakup.

(Knows that maybe somewhere, somehow, it was still worth saving.)

(God, he misses Lucas.)

(He misses Lucas so, so fucking much.)

**Mark:** emergency meeting?

 **Renjun** : in

 **Jeno** : in

 **Chenle:** IN!! IM IN!!

 **Jisung:** In!

 **Donghyuck:** In, see you in a few. About damn time, u bastard

 **Mark** : You’re not invited anymore @Donghyuck

 **Donghyuck** : hahahaa 

**Donghyuck:** classic

 **Jaemin:** I’ll pick up guys up in a few, I’m on my way!!!

-

One of the things Lucas had explicitly asked of the people around him in the immediate days after the breakup was that they kindly refrain from trash-talking Mark. 

Even after he’d discovered Mark had Unfriended him. Even after he’d decided to block Mark on social media. Even after his last text to his ex-boyfriend, which Lucas is positive Mark must have blocked him for. 

(He knows he’s blocked because one night, in what Lucas refuses to call a moment of weakness, he’d tried to call Mark up, only to be met with a “The number you have dialed cannot be reached.”

He’d tried twice, and then left it at that.)

He didn’t want that. Mark wasn’t a bad person, even if the way they’d parted ways wasn’t ideal. But what was an “ideal” break up anyway? 

Lucas knows objectively that there are people who were capable of not having such a shit time trying to get over the end of their respective relationships, but even if it’s been written about, put into song, depicted in movies over and over, there’s never really a guidebook that someone can follow that minimizes the hurt, is there?

The day he decides to open up his main Twitter account after a month and a half hiding out on his private account where only 10 people follow him, there’s a slew of notifications, several hundred retweets on his last photoshoot with Innisfree. There are people who have tagged him in tweets wondering about where he’s been, how he’s doing. 

Some people tweeting about how he’s been gone too long. There are a couple of tweets that are angry, tagging both him and his agency, wanting answers about where he is, why he hasn’t done any shoots, talking about how he’s been mistreated. Lucas swallows, worries about people worrying about him.

He didn’t even know he had a following on this level. His follower count scares him a bit. It’s why he keeps his private account so very private that even his mutuals aren’t supposed to call him anything telling, so when they do respond to his tweets on there, they refer to him as “L”. 

Most people know him by Xuxi or Wong Yukhei. It’s the closest ones, the ones that matter the most that call him Lucas, a name he’d chosen for himself, even if Dejun had made fun of him for choosing such a Western one. 

He looks at his wall, at the framed photos of him and Mark, the other little Polaroids that Mark had strung up on twine with clothesline pins along with new fairy lights after their first anniversary. He thinks he should consider taking them down already. It’s a little pathetic how he hasn’t yet. 

Lucas pulls up his Spotify, not bothering with the morose heartbroken playlist he’s been playing on loop for the last 44 days, and hoping that his Daily Mix 1 has something decent for him. 

He’s three songs in until he hears it, Khalid’s voice soothing, strong enough to jog a memory of when he’d first heard the song, and how Mark had humored him when he’d refused to take it off of loop after he’d seen the music video, how Mark had kissed him with the song playing in the background. How they’d made breakfast while belting it out together.

Lucas closes his eyes. 

Unlocks his phone. 

_Whatever,_ he thinks. _It doesn’t matter. He isn’t gonna see it anyway._

-

The knock on the front door is firm, and Mark knows that if he doesn't come to it in the next twenty seconds, Donghyuck and Jaemin are going to start furiously banging on it and he seriously does not want to have to deal with his neighbors being on his ass for it. 

The ruckus is also expected, his closest friends coming in through the foyer, toeing off their shoes on the way to fill his living room.

This is an Emergency Meeting, and it's a miracle that he's the one that's calling for it. There hasn't been one for their group in a while-- the last one had been when Jeno had timidly asked for one to talk about how he was thinking of shifting majors halfway through junior year. 

Mark has never called for one.

His best friends pile themselves onto the couch and cushy armchairs he’s had for years, all hand-me-downs so none of the upholstery matches, but they’re comfortable. Familiar. 

Mark heads to the kitchen while they settle in to grab a bottle of beer for themselves. He’s got iced tea for Jisung and Chenle to chug while he and the rest get steadily sloshed. He can’t do this fully sober. Not this. 

Renjun, as expected, is the first one to break the silence when Mark settles on the massive pillow on the floor by the table. 

“We’ve been patient, Markles, spill,” Renjun says. Mark adores his best friend-- adores all of them, really for having given him the time to come to things on his own time. 

But Renjun is right that it’s high time he started talking about his feelings. 

See, Mark’s always been really good at keeping things in, despite being the person that people tended to come to when they needed to let things out. It’s always been easier to try to express himself in his music, but even that’s ground to a halt since-- since. 

“So, Lucas and I broke up,” Mark says, and the rest of the boys visibly try to restrain themselves from groaning. “Yeah, yeah, I know, you know.”

“It’s been-- it’s been hard to talk about it,” Mark continues. “For a lot of reasons, it’s been hard. He was so much a part of my life, our lives, that it’s been a complete adjustment being without him.”

“What happened, Mark? We tried to talk to him but he wasn’t big on giving details, either,” Hyuck says, leaning closer, resting his elbows on his knees. “He said if you weren’t going to talk then he wouldn’t, either. You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to deck the both of you.”

What did happen? 

Why did they let it get this bad?

“You don’t think about the end when you’re happy,” Mark says. He looks down, hands wringing in his lap. 

“And for the longest time, we didn’t think the was going to be a time when we weren’t happy. But life gets in the way, and small things kind of start to get forgotten until it’s the big things getting lost along the way.” 

“But I had no idea you guys were having problems,” Jeno says. “You never brought it up.”

“I thought I could handle it, that we could handle it together,” Mark says. His voice is small. “Thought a lot of things wrong, I guess.”

“Is this the first time you guys like, majorly fought? Like, I’m still not clear on the details of what happened,” Renjun says. 

“He was traveling so much, booking gigs, and I was in the studio so often,” Mark says. “It’s like everything was moving so fast, that we started forgetting each other along the way. And it isn’t like we didn’t try. We’d been trying for months, but after so many rainchecks, you start to wonder if you’re not just better off calling things off cos the storm just won’t seem to let up.” 

“Life just happened,” Mark says, closing his eyes at the memory of Lucas crying, of the memory of him saying, “Why do I feel like you didn’t even let me have a say in this?” 

God. 

God. 

It’s all so fucked. 

-

Lucas stares at the tweet that’s sitting at the top of his screen.

He had had an inkling that Mark had seen his tweets, had secretly hoped that he had, if he was truly honest with himself. 

Lucas is exhausted, and for the first time in a while, he doesn’t have anything scheduled for this week, which he is grateful for, and so is his manager, if the strict “I’ll call you if anything comes up but other than that, we’re both on vacation,” that Taeil had left him with before dropping him at his apartment was anything to go by. 

And all the while, he stares at it.

**Mark Lee @markles | 4 hrs ago**

I was searching for some legal document

As the rain beat down on the hood

When I stumbled upon pictures I tried to forget

And that's how this idea was drilled into my head

Lucas’ fingers shake as he moves them to take a screenshot of the tweet, unwilling to believe that it’s real until he hazards actually clicking on Mark’s profile, and has to slowly exhale while he sees Mark’s new profile photo, a shot of his side profile, cheekbone sharper than Lucas has ever remembered them, Mark looking down like he’s in prayer. His header is a shot of neon signs along a wet street, and it’s a sucker punch to the gut that Lucas remembers it because it’s a photo he’d watched Mark take when they’d been walking through Hong Kong on their last trip out together. 

Mark’s bio reads: Rapper, Singer, Dancer | Soundcloud:  https://soundcloud.com/marklee  | YouTube:  youtube.com/channel/DFK425Ssk34 

Lucas knows this is a black hole, knows that it’s a bad idea that he’s on Mark’s profile at all, but he can’t help it. He knows Mark’s seen his. He’s only returning the favor. 

Mark’s pinned tweet is a YouTube link to something Lucas has never seen before, and before he can second-guess himself, he’s opening it before being redirected to his YouTube app, and the title says, _“Disregard”._

The video is black and white, and the camera starts as a close up of Mark’s closed eyes as the beat starts to loop, and Mark begins to nod his head in time. 

“Disregard, uh,” Mark raps into a microphone. “All the pieces and defenses that’chu never ever saw comin’ apart, uh, all the reasons that you couldn’t give that usually coulda made it from the start, uh, never realized indecision would be the one to break your heart, uh, disregard, uh.”

Lucas watches as Mark spits fire, the music cresting with violins and a heavy bass, and Lucas can’t help but think that this is Mark only just as he is peaking. Mark is only just getting started. The song is short, clocking in only 2:57 seconds in total, but it leaves Lucas breathless, in awe of Mark’s talent in a way that only Mark could ever achieve. 

It would be a lie to pretend that watching Mark rise steady and meteoric without him doesn't sting. He keeps playing their last fight over in his head, wondering how he could have changed things, wondering how if he had just changed one thing, one little thing, maybe the outcome would have been different.

He's interrupted by a call from his manager, who informs him that he's up for a shoot in the next few weeks and that he'll be flying out to Macau for it.

Lucas sighs.

He loves what he does, lives for the excitement of being jetted off to the next country, but it's starting to wear him down, even if it hasn't even been a year yet. He'd be remiss to make it sound like he was ungrateful for it, because he isn't, but when he's left to his own devices, he has no choice but to think about the decisions he'd made all those months ago, back when he'd started calling the shots and forgetting to factor Mark into his plans. 

It doesn’t help that sometimes Lucas is whisked away for weeks at a time. The agency has plans for him that go beyond modeling gigs and that means time spent away to shoot on location. They’re trying to build him up to be a personality, an actor, someone built for things beyond runway shows and commercial films.

Lucas remembers a time when he and Mark had been walking along the river, hand in hand with the breeze softly blowing between the trees that lined the pathway when he'd had Mark's hand in his and Lucas had brought it to his lips.

"I can't believe that they'd do that though," Mark had said. "I would never give up my dreams for someone else."

Lucas had paused there, his thoughts throwing themselves forward to the contract that he was thinking of signing, the contract that he and Mark had pored over just the night prior. it was this kind of drive that kept Lucas tied to him, that kept Lucas swooning over Mark Lee and his drive, his unwavering belief in himself and his abilities.

Mark had had his face scrunched up, the biting wind making him cold. Lucas wanted to kiss him, so he stepped up, stepped into Mark's space.

"What?" Mark had asked, startled by the sudden closeness.

"Nothing," Lucas had said. "I just love it when you get all fiery and righteous like this," and then cupped Mark's face in both his hands to kiss him.

He should have known that was the beginning of the end.

Lucas toggles back to the Twitter profile, and scrolls down. Keeps scrolling down. He's not sure what he's hoping for, but it certainly isn't this, some cryptic tweets, some lyrics to songs.

Hope blooms in his chest like a traitor and it makes breathing hard. Lucas glances at the calendar on his table, at the messy scrawl that Mark had left, encircling his birthday.

They hadn't known then that they'd end up here, left to not speak to each other when Lucas had had all these grand plans for Mark's birthday-- when he'd had so many grand plans for the rest of their lives.

He takes a breath, counts to ten. Tells himself that hitting the Follow button is a bad idea. Hates that this is what they've come to: radio silence, the commiseration of a button on a cursed website.

Lucas aches with the loss of Mark, the loss of what they were to each other. He aches but he lets the hurt go, albeit momentarily. Mark had always been so fucking adamant about his rule, his stubbornness taking over everything. Lucas wonders how he hasn't gotten to the point of resentment yet, but he can't help but think about Mark's indirect response to him. He knows Lucas has had a bad week. He knows that Mark knows. This has to mean something, doesn't it? It's gotta be so much more than just this empty longing. It just has to be. This can't be all in Lucas' head.

-

The beer bottles lay strewn on the floor beneath the coffee table, and Jaemin is staring at the carpet as Mark winds down, finishing his piece. They're all pretty quiet. Mark has never wanted an earthquake to happen so badly. He's mortified because now that he's said everything out loud, it feels like he's been a fucking asshole, and he's pretty sure that his friends probably think so, as well.

Renjun is the first to speak, which Mark hadn't expected, but given how close he is to Lucas, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Mark wonders how much Lucas has told him in actuality.

"You're right," Renjun says. "About life getting in the way."

Mark glances down, his vision swimming from the tears that begin to pool in his eyes. He thinks about how he's a fucking asshole, cutting Lucas out like that. Thinks about how difficult this entire ordeal has been, and how he'd made it even more so by being so hell-bent on sticking to his rule. He can't even remember anymore why he'd been so adamant about it, the decision to hold on to it so much. People could be friends. It didn't have to be this hard.

He'd just never wanted to have to dance around the entire thing of having had a history with someone, especially not a history as intimate as the one he has with Lucas, who was his first love, his first long-term relationship, the first boy he'd ever introduced to his parents when he'd finally coughed up the courage to come out. Lucas is his first everything except his first kiss, and that should have counted for more than the way he's treated him this entire time.

"You were a dick," Donghyuck says, voicing his opinion in the only way he knows how. "It didn't have to be like this, but you already know that, otherwise you wouldn't have called us here. You wouldn't have started subtweeting him like some lovesick loser."

Mark thinks he should be offended, but he can't bring himself to be when he knows full well that Donghyuck is right.

"Sometimes these things are just simple," Chenle says, and Mark marvels at how grown he is to him all of a sudden because even if they've all hit their twenties already, Mark still remembers him as a plump-cheeked menace. "You didn't have to complicate it like this but I get you."

"Do you miss him?" Jeno asks, looking Mark in the eye, so much more serious than Mark remembers him ever being.

The question is almost insulting, but Mark swallows through it.

"I'd have to be a robot to not miss him," Mark replies, trying to keep the hurt from his voice.

"So why don't you tell him so?" Jeno cuts through the silence. "It doesn't have to be this fucking hard."

Mark plays with the bottle in his hands. He wonders.

"Yeah, maybe."

-

_This is a bad idea_ , Lucas thinks to himself, staring at Mark's username. _Close this app immediately._

But instead, he's staring at the little envelope icon like his life depends on it. What kind of cowardice has he resorted to, subtweeting his ex like this, considering sending his ex a DM when he knows exactly what Mark sounds like when he's breathless and incoherent in Lucas' arms, when he knows what it’s like to talk to Mark for hours on end.

Fuck, this entire thing fucking sucks. It sucks so much, knowing that they've gone from being best friends and lovers to this, this weird limbo of being strangers to each other when they know every intimate detail there is to know about one another.

Does this even make sense? So what, he’ll start following Mark again and then what? He thinks about the uproar. His followers had speculated about their breakup for so long. Surely someone would see immediately that he was following Mark and would screencap it and then his notifs would blow up again. Maybe this peace that has settled between them at least online is a saving grace. 

Not for the first time, Lucas wonders if messaging Mark would be a good idea. It’s been three months since they last spoke, and even if his chest feels like it’s begun to heal, Lucas is fully cognizant of the fact that he is not okay. He doesn’t think he ever will be. 

He closes the goddamn bird app, and pulls open his messages instead. A text instead of KKT, so he doesn’t need to agonize over knowing his message has been seen. Wonders if Mark still has his number blocked.

“Hey, I miss you” 

Lucas stares at what he’s just typed out. He can’t say that, that’s stupid. That’s not how he should open. Definitely not like that. What does he even want? A second chance? Just to talk?

It’s hard. At the end of the day, Lucas lost his best friend in all of this, the first person he’d ever told about his misgivings about taking up medicine, about how scared he was about coming out to his family and knowing that not only would he be disappointing his parents by not becoming a doctor, but also because he was gay. He’d lost the person who had held his hand through the entire thing, on a phone call to his mother who was time zones away. 

And for what? Ambition? 

Why did they have to pay such a high price for the things they wanted to do? 

There had always been this talk about powering through it, about how they loved each other enough to weather anything. Weather the tides moving. Weather the changes in schedule. Weather the times apart. 

Lucas pulls on his headphones, toggles over to his Daily Mix 1, and hits play. 

Of course, in a cosmic sort of cruel joke, ‘Supercut’ by Lorde is what comes on, and he can’t help himself, looking for the lyrics to tweet out. 

He doesn’t know if Mark will see it this time, but he doesn’t care. 

**Xuxi 🍣 @wongyukhei | 6s**

'Cause in my head (in my head, I do everything right)

When you call (when you call, I'll forgive and not fight)

Because ours (are the moments I play in the dark)

We were wild and fluorescent, come home to my heart, uh

https://open.spotify.com/track/6K8VQ84MqhsoakN5MjrnVR 

The quote RTs happen almost instantaneously, and the worst part is seeing that his tactless followers have decided to fucking tag Mark in it. God. He should just delete it, and he’s about to, when he sees a notification. 

_Mark Lee liked your Tweet_

Lucas’ hands are shaking, and he kicks himself for it, being giddy over a single sort of interaction. 

He definitely does not expect what happens next, a little red “1” appearing over the envelope icon. 

A message request from Mark Lee. 

Jesus fucking Christ. 

“What are we doing?”, the message reads. 

Three grey dots appear on-screen like Mark is about to send something else. Lucas waits.

Nothing else comes in. 

“I don’t know” Lucas replies, and hits send. 

“But I know that I miss you”, he adds. “Sorry.” 

Mark doesn’t reply. Lucas hadn’t expected him to. 

-

“Sorry.”

Mark keeps running it over and over and over in his head. Lucas has always worn his heart on his sleeve, has always been so good at being honest about how he felt about things, about Mark. It had been refreshing and terrifying in equal measure, knowing that telling the truth came so naturally to Lucas, while Mark was good at bottling things up.

Mark had learned, over four and a half years, to open up, to tell Lucas the things that piqued his interest; Mark had learned to fight fair, had learned to open himself to vulnerability. Mark had learned to show his love freely, to laugh louder, to live bigger. 

Lucas had told him once, as he had wiped the sweat from Mark’s forehead, their bodies pressed so close together after Lucas had spent hours worshipping Mark’s body, that he loved how their differences complemented each other. 

“You ground me,” Lucas had said, and Mark had traced Lucas’ lips with his fingers as he spoke. “You temper me. You calm me.”

“You make me feel alive, Lucas,” Mark had replied. There was a mess between their bodies, proof of their hunger for each other. It was uncomfortable, but Mark hadn't seemed to mind. 

“Yeah?” Lucas had smiled, bringing him in for a kiss. “You make me feel alive, too.”

Mark stares at the message and knows that he should reply. 

“I miss you, too.” 

He hits send, even if it’s been hours since Lucas’ message. 

Jesus, what the fuck are they doing?

-

Lucas is on edge. He can’t keep his leg from shaking, and it makes the little table he’s sat at shake in turn. The coffee he’d ordered in order to get a seat in the cafe sloshes around in the white mug, the latte swan starting to dissolve in the movement. 

Mark will arrive in a few minutes, assuming that nothing happens on the way like an accident or the car breaking down or Mark ghosting him-- Lucas halts his thoughts.

Mark wouldn’t ghost him.

They’ve had a bitter breakup but he knows Mark wouldn’t do that. 

Lucas fiddles with his phone, keeps opening the note he’s prepared, a laundry list of things he wants to say to his ex that are the truth, and are just a few words shy of saying, “Please, can we try again?”

There’s a soft ding to the bell that hangs over the coffee shop’s door, and Lucas glances up in time to see Mark walk in and Lucas nearly falls to his knees with how good Mark looks in his distressed jeans, his Van Halen shirt, his denim jacket. Lucas misses him so badly it’s physical agony to restrain himself from groveling on the floor. 

_Pull yourself together, Wong_ , he tells himself. 

This coffee shop was Mark’s idea. Small enough for the quiet they need, but not so small that their conversation is the only thing to be heard as the music plays softly over the speakers. The baristas, Johnny and Jaehyun, take turns to wipe down the tables and serve coffee and cakes and it’s not a stifling environment. Lucas is glad for it. 

He stands up as Mark approaches him, and he nearly knocks over the table in his haste. Some of the coffee spills over the rim of the mug, and Mark, on instinct, reaches out to steady the mug, and it makes Lucas smile, remembering Mark’s Spidey senses, glad to see them still intact. 

They’re not sure how to approach each other. It’s been three months since they last spoke face to face, three months since they’d had any contact at all. Lucas knows what Mark feels like in his arms, and here they are, standing in front of each other, unsure if a hug is even allowed. 

“This is stupid,” Mark mutters, and opens his arms, waiting for Lucas to step into his embrace, which he does immediately. The hug is brief, but it happens as a series of moments for Lucas, who takes in the new scent -- a familiar scent-- of Mark’s perfume. Mark’s hair is dark again. When they’d broke up, it had been blonde, and Lucas’ had been green. They both seem to have wanted to go back to their roots. 

Mark pulls away after he runs his hand over Lucas’ back briefly, and takes a seat across him. 

“Hey,” Lucas says in an exhale, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Mark is actually here in the flesh, when he’d resigned himself to probably never seeing Mark again, stupid fucking clean break be damned. 

“Hey,” Mark replies, eyes downcast. “Uh, why’d you get coffee? Is that a new thing?”

Lucas glances at the capuccino, at the brown contents that had spilled over. The latte art is indecipherable now. 

“Honestly, I didn’t even think about it,” Lucas says. “Johnny, the cute barista, was like, ‘Do you want suggestions?’ when I stared at the menu for like five minutes.” 

Mark laughs a bit, shaking his head. 

“You never really did do coffee shops much,” Mark replies. “Don’t know why you didn’t just go with your usual tea.”

Lucas’ insides feel like they’re going to implode. Mark referencing something he knows about Lucas. God, this is so bare-minimum but it still makes Lucas’ chest soar with longing. 

“I didn’t really have much of an appetite coming in here,” Lucas replies. “You know.”

Mark sets his phone down on the table. 

“Yeah, I know,” Mark replies. 

There’s a beat of silence before Mark says, “I’m gonna order something--”

“You can have my coffee,” Lucas says. “It’s a little cold now but-- well, it’s your usual.” 

Mark stares at it, licks his lips, and nods. 

“Okay,” Mark says, bringing the mug closer to him, and taking a sip. “Two sugars?”

Lucas nods. Jesus, this is agony. 

“How have you been?” Mark asks, and he looks Lucas in the eye, and Lucas wishes that this didn’t feel so stilted, so formal, but the fact that Mark was the one who offered to meet up in the first place is already a huge deal, so Lucas wills himself to relax.

“I’ve been busy,” Lucas says. “I mean work has been good, but my entire body clock is thrown off. I’ve learned to take naps when I can.” 

Mark nods.

“I saw the shoot you did for Ralph Lauren,” Mark says. “You looked really good, Su--Lucas.” 

Lucas doesn’t miss the slip of the tongue. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Mark calling him ‘Sushi’. 

“I’m really proud of you,” Mark says. “You did New York Fashion Week, that’s insane!”

Lucas flushes. That had been tough, trying to get through it. After the breakup, every single day was agony. It still is, truth be told. He’d barely slept, had barely eaten. The makeup artist had tsked in his ear when he’d come in for the Jason Wu show, had told him that she was concerned about how many of her models had come in looking gaunt lately. 

Lucas had tried to smile reassuringly as she had layered on the concealer under his eyes. 

“Baby, this isn’t the first time I’m doing your makeup,” Wendy had said while she took the beauty blender to his cheek. “What’s going on?”

“Breakup,” Lucas had said, and then looked away, blinking furiously to prevent himself from tearing up again.

“Oh honey,” Wendy had replied, her hands dropping to the sides. “I’m so sorry.”

Lucas had fixed his eyes back onto his reflection.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Thank you,” Lucas says now. “It was a tough week, but I got through it.” 

Mark nods, and takes another sip. 

“I watched ‘Disregard’,” Lucas says. “It’s really good, Markles. It’s really, really good. You’re doing great work with Chanyeol.” 

Mark flushes. Lucas can see the pink under his t-shirt, creeping up to his neck and his ears. 

“Oh-- ah, thank you,” Mark replies. “I honestly didn’t think that it was gonna make the cut but when I showed it to Yeol he really seemed to like it. We recorded a demo and then pieced together the final recording in like, a week.” 

Mark is smiling. His eyes are lit up, and there’s a tiny smile on his face, and it breaks Lucas’ heart all over again, because this is where the end had been spelled out for them. 

“I’m really happy,” Lucas says. “I’ve always known you had it in you. It’s really nice to see things panning out for you now. You’re making the art you wanted to make.” 

Mark is smiling now, but it’s a broken thing, Lucas can tell. He’d had a hard time reading Mark when they’d first met, but over time, Mark had started letting him in. Right now, despite having his walls up, Lucas is glad to know that he still somewhat has access. 

“I really miss you,” Mark says. He spots the receipt for the coffee. He starts to twist the paper in his fingers. “I really miss us.” 

Lucas can’t believe what he’s hearing, can’t believe that Mark is beating him to the punch here. This is supposed to be his line. His heart aches so much.

“You know I miss you too,” Lucas replies. “You know that I miss us, too.”

Mark laughs but it’s humorless, wet, like he’s trying to hold back tears.

“You know, I cried for the first time over us the other day,” Mark says. “I called for an Emergency Meeting and the Dreamies came over and I told them what happened with us and that’s when I cried.”

Lucas steadies his own hands on the table. He uses every ounce of willpower to not reach other the tiny space between them to hold Mark’s shaking hands. 

“I haven’t stopped crying since then,” Mark adds. He sniffles. “I keep going over it in my head, you know? What the fuck happened. I’m sorry that I hadn’t worked hard---”

“But you did,” Lucas says. “I’m the one that started getting forgetful. I’m the one who--”

“Lucas,” Mark cuts him off. “I’m not trying to play the blame game here. We’ve done enough of that.” 

“I just don’t get it,” Lucas says, and he’s trying to keep the desperation from spilling over like the coffee in the mug but he can’t help it. “Why can’t we just try again? I mean it’s clear that we’re both still in love with each other, I don’t--”

“Lucas, where we’re going with our lives don’t allow for us settling. I’m not built like you, I’m not built to wait around for you, which is what I had to do when you started jetting off everywhere and--”

“So I’ll quit!” Lucas says, his heart racing. “I’ll call my manager right now and quit this and--”

“Lucas, we have already talked about your tendency to make rash decisions when you’re emotional,” Mark says.

“Don’t do this, Mark, I’m trying to tell you that you matter more to me than I ever realized and that if leaving this job is what it takes--”

“Lucas!” 

Mark is heaving, red-faced, eyes filled with tears. 

“If I want you, I want you with me, every day,” Mark says softly. His voice is so low, and so hurt, and Lucas wants to take the hurt away. “But I can’t have you the way I want you and it’s not fair of me to cut you off from what you want out of life right now. You gotta seize the opportunity _now_. And if life brings us together again in the future, then so be it. It might not be the same as it was, but we can have each other in a new way.”

Lucas feels like he’s being torn open all over again. 

That had been it, hadn’t it? 

“I’m sorry, Mark,” Lucas says. 

It’s loaded. 

It’s, “ _I’m sorry that we’re not good at long-distance relationships_.” 

It’s, “ _I’m sorry I accused of you not factoring me into the decision to break up when I hadn’t factored you into my decision to live this life._

It’s _, “I’m sorry when I knew that yours would keep you here._ ”

It’s, _“I’m sorry that I wanted this life so badly._ ” 

-

Mark had known, when he decided that they needed to meet up, that this conversation would hurt, but he hadn’t known then just how much. 

They’d already been through the breakup. They’d already gone through all the fighting.

So why the fuck did it feel like this was happening for the first time all over again?

“I’m sorry, too,” Mark replies. “I’m done fighting with you. I love you so much, and I don’t want to remember you bitterly. We have to stop.”

Lucas’ eyes are bloodshot from the strain of trying to keep himself from bawling. 

Mark wants so badly to make this work. He wants to be able to be understanding of the time apart. He wants to be able to trust his own paranoia, his own heart when Lucas has to be away, but the time and the distance just make it impossible for Mark to be comfortable with playing the waiting game. Lucas has always been built for a life of wonder, has always wanted to explore the world in ways that Mark just can’t see himself doing for the time being, not when the things he wants to do keep him here, grounded in Seoul. 

“We have to move on, Lucas,” Mark says, forcing the words out even when he wants nothing more than to say ‘Okay, let’s try again.’ Mark takes a breath. “Time isn’t stopping for you and me. Just know that I have loved you, and still love you, and the time we had together can never be taken away from us. The good times and the bad times were all time well spent finding ourselves. I don’t think I can stop loving you. I’ll think of us fondly, forever, and I can’t thank you enough for that.”

Lucas glances at a spot behind Mark, giving an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Lucas deflates in on himself but then straightens his back out. 

“Okay,” Lucas says before clearing his throat. “You’re right. You are, I know you are. But maybe it doesn’t have to… suck so much. Why do we have to cut each other off? That’s really all I’m asking for now, Mark. You’re my best friend. I have Dejun, and Yangyang, and Hendery, sure, but they’re not you. I understand that talking the way we used to will take some time to get back but I honestly don’t think that things have to be as hard as they have been for us.”

Mark closes his eyes, lets the familiarity of Lucas pouring his entire heart out on the table wash over him, something he used to do so often while Mark had to bite his tongue. Mark thinks about his rules, about how he’d thought that cutting each other off was the best way to heal. 

All it had done was let their wounds fester. 

“I don’t know how to do this,” Mark says honestly. “I don’t know how to be in that weird limbo between being your best friend and having been your boyfriend. I don’t know how I’ll handle-- fuck.”

Mark exhales like there’s a dagger in his side. Jesus Christ, he hadn’t allowed himself to think this far.

“I don’t know how I’ll handle seeing you with someone else,” Mark says. 

“Do I seem like I’ll be looking for anyone else any time soon?” Lucas says, and Mark can see the hurt in his eyes, can feel the hurt emanating off of him in waves. “I mean sure I’ve seen a lot of good-looking people but I’ve only ever wanted you.”

“I know, and it’s the same for me too, Lucas,” Mark says. “But I’m not going to go around naively thinking that we’re just going to keep pining for each other from afar. We don’t know how we’re going to feel tomorrow, or the next month, or the next year.”

It’s a lot. There’s so much they don’t know. Except---

“But I do know this,” Mark continues. “My rule? It’s dumb.”

Lucas lets out a wet laugh, a tear escaping down his cheek before he hastily wipes it off. 

“Thank God you finally came to your senses,” Lucas replies, and Mark throws the balled up receipt at Lucas, which makes him duck, and yelp out a “Hey!”

“I have no idea how this works, Lucas,” Mark says. “But I know I don’t want you out of my life ever again. The last three months have been agony.”

Lucas reaches out at this, lays his hand on the table, palm up, patient. Mark sees it. Remembers all of the times that he’d marveled at how small his hand was compared to Lucas’. Remembers what those hands used to mean to him: comfort, reassurance, strength, pleasure, stability. Remembers that he’d fallen in love with Lucas when he’d gotten down on his knees and used those very hands to clean up the mess of his spilled lunch, all those years ago on that fateful day in the cafeteria. 

Mark lays his hand on Lucas’, palm against his. 

“I love you so much, Mark,” Lucas says, and he says it so sadly that Mark nearly pulls away, but instead moves his thumb and his pinky to hook under Lucas’ hand. 

“I love you so much, Lucas” Mark replies. “I really, really love you so much.”

“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t,” Lucas says. Mark smiles, this small bittersweet thing. 

“Neither can I, Sushi,” Mark says. God. God, how the fuck is this going to work?

“Let’s just… we’ll take it slow,” Lucas says, laying his other hand on top of Mark’s. “I think we’ll figure it out somehow. I think we’ll know.”

Mark isn’t a crier, but all he wants to do is curl up in Lucas’ arms and cry into his shoulder. The phantom limb. It’s real and right here. 

“So we remain unblocked, yeah?” Mark laughs a bit. “And our subtweeting?”

Lucas shrugs.

“I’m not gonna stop doing that,” Lucas says. “It’s up to you to read into it or not.” His voice is teasing, his smirk even more so. 

Mark huffs out a laugh, his nose congested. 

“Fine,” Marks says. “I’m not gonna follow you just yet.” 

“That’s okay,” Lucas says. “We can just go back to stalking each other and replying cryptically while our friends berate us.” 

“I don’t know if that’s healthy,” Mark says, the last of his tears starting to dry up. 

“Fuck the rules, Mark,” Lucas says. “We’ll figure it out.”

Mark allows himself this, to feel, to really feel it coursing through his veins, this sort of longing, and love. Allows it to flow to his fingertips in the hopes that Lucas will feel it too. He takes one last good look at this beautiful boy, his brilliant smile, his bright eyes. Mark traces the curve of Lucas’ mouth, the slope of his nose, the arch of his eyebrow. Commits it all to memory, how he feels for Lucas in this moment: in love, in awe.

There’s no such thing as clean breaks, Mark thinks to himself. Not when you’ve loved someone as wonderful as Lucas Wong.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Mark says softly, glancing at their joined hands. “We’ll figure it out."

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so thank you’s! 
> 
> This is the first fic fest I’ve actually joined and completed, and as such, it made me a little antsy, not being able to publish when I normally would have. This meant that the longer I sat on it, the more time I had to second-guess myself. 
> 
> I wanna give a special little shoutout to the people who beta-read this story: Klo, D, Emi, H, Ain, Cap, and Yaya who all had feedback that I took into consideration and helped me shaped the story into something more solid and something I was sure of. I normally don’t usually have that many eyes on a draft, but this was such a fun story to write, if a little painful, and I was glad to have other perspectives to help me see it clearer. 
> 
> And also a special, super important thank you to Any who quite literally handed me the ending for this story. I was stumped, not quite sure if I wanted them to end up together again or not, but then Any talked it out with me. The following lines came from her:
> 
> _“If I want you, I want you with me, every day. But I can’t have you the way I want you and it’s not fair of me to cut you off from what you want out of life right now. You gotta seize the opportunity now. And if life brings us together again in the future, then so be it. It might not be the same as it was, but we can have each other in a new way.”_
> 
> _“We have to move on, Lucas. Time isn’t stopping for you and me. Just know that I have loved you, and still love you, and the time we had together can never be taken away from us. The good times and the bad times were all time well spent finding ourselves. I don’t think I can stop loving you. I’ll think of us fondly, forever, and I can’t thank you enough for that.”_
> 
> _“I’m done fighting with you. I love you so much, and I don’t want to remember you bitterly. We have to stop.”_
> 
> These lines really tied the story together, and I honestly don’t think I would have had as solid a finish if it wasn’t for you, so thank you so much for that, mama! 
> 
> I love all the people I listed here. I am so, so grateful to them, and to the prompter for such a lovely prompt. I truly do hope you liked it, and if not, please let me know what you wish I had done so that I can get something constructive to work with for the next time! :D 
> 
> I loved writing this, and I’m genuinely proud of it. I tried to not write this in a rush, and I think this is one of the stories that I’ve put a lot of care into. Thank you for reading it. Please let me know what you thought of it in the comments!


End file.
